Nokia Project

...couldn’t put my video back together again.

The video to the right is one of three source videos I used to create this train wreck. I was trying to cover/review a new video game, Supreme Commander. The idea needed three separate shots. I might have set myself up for failure though, as I decided that I was only going to allow myself one shot at everything, no re-dos. The plan was to:

• Shoot 30 second clip of buying Supreme Commander (filming with a Samsung A920 phone – maximum 30 second clips)
• Shoot 10 second interview with another customer also buying SC
• Shoot 30 seconds worth of action scenes from game while talking over them with a short review
• Convert from phone video format (.3g2) to .wmv to edit in Windows Movie Maker
• Glue the shots together in WMM (crude but good description in link)
• Convert from .wmv to .mov for the blog
• End up with 1 minute 10 second clip

Everything in the processed worked great. By great, meaning that I ended up with about 33 seconds of garbled audio and a bunch of missing video. I’m pretty sure the multiple conversions killed the attempt. I wanted to try and use only tools that were already on my computer. WMM comes with XP and I had the conversion tool from previously playing with a video off my phone. Had I just settled on a single shot or gone up to the college and used Final Cut to put the three shots together, everything probably would have gone swimmingly.

Lessons learned:

1. Use better conversion/editing tools.
2. .3g2 format seems to play just fine unconverted, but it's small at 176x144.
3. Faces look better than computer screenshots with my phone camera (video doesn’t show this, but I learned it).
4. I pity the fool who would have to manage content like this.